Cuba gets the message, when will Obama [or California]
Cuba to Lay Off 500,000 State Employees, Ease Private-Enterprise Curbs
By JOSE DE CORDOBA
Cuba will lay off more than half a million state workers and try to create hundreds of thousands of private sector jobs, a sharp shift by the hemisphere's only Communist country toward a more capitalist-style economy.
The mass layoffs will take place between now and the end of March, according to a statement by the Cuban Workers Federation, the island nation's only official labor union. Workers will be encouraged to find private-sector jobs.
"Our state can't keep maintaining ... budgeted sectors with bloated payrolls," the statement said.
The move represents Cuba's biggest step towards a more market-oriented economic system since the early 1990s, when it embarked on a brief period of change after the collapse of the Soviet Union, its main benefactor.
The shift in the workforce is also the boldest effort to remake the flagging economy since Raul Castro, the brother of retired dictator Fidel Castro, took the helm of the Communist country more than four years ago after his brother fell gravely ill.
To help workers who are laid off, the union said Cuba will allow a far greater number of citizens to work for themselves rather than in state jobs, handing out licenses for self-employment and promoting job-creating industries like oil and tourism.
"Job options will be increased and broadened with new forms of non-state employment, among them leasing land, cooperatives and self-employment, absorbing hundreds of thousands of workers in the coming years," the union statement said.
The changes were announced shortly after Fidel Castro gave a controversial interview to The Atlantic magazine, in which he said the Cuban model no longer worked for any country, much less Cuba. Mr. Castro later said he was kidding and was misunderstood.
Cuba's 1990s experiment with market economics didn't last long. Changes, such as permitting self-employment and allowing the U.S. dollar to circulate, were gradually rolled back after the island stabilized its economy.
online.wsj.com |
